


Ghosts In The Walls

by scrapbullet



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-05
Updated: 2011-02-05
Packaged: 2017-10-24 01:47:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/257530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrapbullet/pseuds/scrapbullet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ariadne turns Paris on its head as Mal watches, silent and austere. Shaping the world as only an architect can Ariadne twists and folds and manipulates the very fabric of the dream until the sky is pink is orange is yellow and the wonder of creation settles in her rib cage, warm and heavy and golden. Wherein Cobb is but a shade and Mal is a woman tormented.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts In The Walls

_”Do you know what it is to be a lover, to be half of a whole?”_

Ariadne turns Paris on its head as Mal watches, silent and austere. Shaping the world as only an architect can Ariadne twists and folds and manipulates the very fabric of the dream until the sky is pink is orange is yellow and the wonder of creation settles in her rib cage, warm and heavy and golden. It’s like nothing she’s ever felt before, this power at her fingertips and she rejoices; catches a blossom on the wind and transforms it into a butterfly of cream and grey. It lingers for but a moment, fluttering its wings serenely before it takes flight.

She feels like a god.

“You’re changing too much,” Mal says, and her fingers catch on Ariadne’s scarf as the projections pause, their heads turning collectively, their eyes a discomforting weight, “change too much and the mind _knows_ -” she pauses, and her face pales, “-this place, Ariadne, you created this place from memory, did you not? You must never-”

But Mal doesn’t get the chance to finish. Can’t, for the projections swarm like flies to a rancid corpse - _“Mal? What, what’s going on?”_ \- their hands greedy and full of ire, digging in to Ariadne’s flesh until fear makes her heart bomb in her chest. They hold them both tight and Mal struggles against them with fear on her face, her composure lost as he, he with blue eyes and warm hands that handles the hilt with certainty, slips a knife into Ariadne’s gut, only smiles and says _“Mal, I love you.”_

Pain is all in the mind, or so they say, and Ariadne has never been so sure of it in her life. It’s like nothing she’s ever felt before, indescribable, a brief moment of agony and terror before she wakes up in blessed reality with the wretched taste of bile bubbling up in her throat and her body shuddering in remembered fear.

She retches, and Arthur holds her hair back.

His hands shake, but he doesn’t say a word.

-

“Who is he?”

Mal sighs, her hand warm as she cups Ariadne’s cheek. She’s as cold and barren as the winter, Ariadne muses, and just as beautiful. Mal smiles as if she knows exactly what she’s thinking, has dipped her fingertips into the well of Ariadne’s thoughts and found it of interest. “He was my husband, long ago, my Dominic.” There is such sadness in her voice, a bittersweet lilt and she kisses Ariadne with lips that lack fire and passion, thumb pressing hard and insistent against her cheek.

Ariadne longs to thaw that ice; to melt it with her hands and her mouth and her body.

But the shadow of Dom Cobb simply won’t allow it.

-

“Cobb was the best extractor in the business,” Eames says as he inspects Ariadne’s models with a critical eye. He’s almost boastful, as if he himself had a hand in creating the very man that Cobb became and really, she wouldn’t doubt it. “He and Mal were the cream of the crop, the epitome of perfection,” full lips quirk into a wistful smile. “And then the bastard went and lost his marbles. Shame.”

Somewhere behind them Arthur scowls. “A little respect for the dead, Eames, if you please.”

Eames merely shrugs, allowing the length of his body to lounge languidly, the office chair creaking faintly in protest. “It is what it is, Arthur, sugar coating it does no-one any good.” Their eyes lock and it is, for lack of a better word, smouldering. “Ms Mallorie would prefer the truth be spoken of rather than lies, I’m sure.”

“Mal doesn’t want it to be _spoken of_ at all.”

Ariadne clears her throat, uncomfortable. “What happened to him, to Cobb?”

A pause. She tastes ash on her tongue.

“He killed himself,” Arthur replies finally, his mouth tightening in displeasure. His hands fumble on crisp paper, ink spilling haphazardly over a sepia toned photograph; a small boned child with clear, translucent skin and aristocratic features.

Oh.

  


_“You’re waiting for a train...”_

  
She doesn’t know why she does it, not really. Mal is a tempting thing, her lissom body curled up into the chair, wrist bare and decorated by the slender IV line. The PASIV whirrs softly, a gentle thrum that is as inviting as the very prospect of entering Mal’s dreams to discover her deepest, darkest secrets.

Curiosity killed the cat.

When she slips into the dream, it’s warm. There’s a beach - the sand white-gold and deceptively soft between her bare toes - and in the distance two children play with their father, bathed in sunlight beneath a clear blue sky. It’s a peaceful tableau and Ariadne can’t help but avert her eyes for encroaching on such an intimate scene, a memory if the sharp tang of salt on her tongue is anything to go by, and Mal slides an arm around her shoulders with a stifled exhalation. “You shouldn’t be here, rabbit.”

Shielding her eyes from the sun Ariadne frowns. “You never told me you had children.”

Mal purses her lips. “Dom... Dom was a wonderful man in life. He loved our children with all his heart; adored them.” Her eyes shutter, close off the world. “When he lost his mind, his sanity, he believed that our reality was but a dream. That our _children_ were simply projections. He believed it so completely he refused to even look at them.”

Mal is a woman shadowed by pain and suffering. Her body is buckling under the sheer weight of it, and when Ariadne turns to her, she is weeping. “He killed them, my darlings. He killed them to prove they were not real. He killed them."

The taste of sorrow is bittersweet.

Ariadne feels physically sick. “I’m - _Christ_ \- I’m so sorry-”

“Here he is but a shade, nothing more than a twisted fragment; a ghost.” Longing; it colours every word that passes Mal’s lips, fingers flexing, lost in the maelstrom of loss and memory and blind to all else, yearning to reach out and-

 _(James laughs as the sandcastle tumbles to pieces, mashing his hands in the damp mess with unrestrained joy. Phillipa scowls and berates him, vehement – “There’s not enough water, James! Look what you did!” – but James just rubs clumps of sand into her hair and her huff of outrage makes Dom laugh, wide and open and vulnerable.)_

Mal looks at Ariadne, and there is desolation in her eyes. Whatever she had once had with Dom is nevermore, and her children... her children are lost to her; cold and dead and long since buried. “We need to leave-”

 _“Mama!”_ Phillipa, her face rosy with sunburn, calls loud and youthful and excited, and yet, Mal can’t look at her. Can’t, for the very sight of her daughters face will be enough for her to question her reality. _“Mama! Teach me how to swim?”_

Ariadne slips away. She rides the elevator down into the belly of the beast, stomach churning in discomfort, with only the distant sound of a child’s laughter to ease the passing.

Misery loves company.

  


_...A train that will take you far away._

  
The hotel room is wrecked, glass biting into the soles of her bare feet. They bleed, but she doesn’t feel it.

"You're pretty," Dom says, and his expression is deceptively warm as he appraises her from head to toe, "a little young, but I guess you'll do."

"I, what-"

He's quick. Quicker than Ariadne, quicker than he appears. He pins her to the wall, working his thigh between her legs until they reluctantly part, her chest heaving, adrenaline flooding though her system. Dom cocks his head, calculating. He looks at her as one would an insect, seconds away from peeling back the hard shell to reveal the vulnerable underbelly.

 _He's not real, he's not. Just a figment, just a shade-_

"Are you frightened? You should be... I could hurt you so much, Ariadne," he touches her, and his palms are hot as they graze her breasts, drifting down to span the flat expanse of her stomach. Sound roars in her ears, and she struggles against a hold that does not abate. "I could peel the flesh from your bones until you scream,” Dom says tenderly, tilts Ariadne’s head up to force his fingers into her mouth. “I could cut out your tongue.”

Blood bursts in her mouth as she bites down as hard as she can muster, but he just laughs. He laughs and Ariadne veritably snarls, ripping her head away from his hold until he presses bloodied fingers into the hollow of her throat. Ariadne grits her teeth. “Let. Me. Go.”

There's a pause, where his breath is hot on her lips and his grip tightens for just a moment. Dom blinks, smiles like sunshine. "You only had to ask."

-

The disappointment on Mal’s face is like a sucker punch in the gut. It leaves Ariadne flushed and reeling, tearing the IV line out of her wrist in such a hurry that blood wells, rich and crimson in its wake.

It’s so heady, that bitter pill, that she aches for days. It festers deep within, takes root, and it’s of no surprise that Mal refuses her company at night, when the warehouse is dark and silent and lonely.

They don’t speak of it, but the shame Ariadne feels is excruciating.

-

 _“See, dear?” Dom says, his hands coated in gore - James and Phillipa’s, their tiny bodies gutted from throat to groin, steaming entrails spilling slick and wet onto the kitchen floor - and he smiles, chillingly satisfied. “I told you they weren’t real.”_

-

It goes something like this;

Fischer’s subconscious is militarised and Saito is wounded as the projections close in with relentless purpose. Mal trembles at the precipice of an ever widening chasm, mere seconds from losing that tenuous grasp on reality and falling to her doom. Her hands clench into fists, knuckles white. Eames is chipping away at Robert Fischer this very moment, but it only exacerbates the inevitable; of time slipping through their fingers.

“When were you in Limbo?” Ariadne stands, hands shoved haphazardly into her pockets. She’s anxious; that’s all too clear.

The skin around Mal’s eyes tightens imperceptibly. She almost seems reluctant, eying Ariadne with trepidation in her gaze. “Dom was a curious man,” she says finally, carefully. “He and I explored the realm of dreaming, but it was never enough for him. He yearned for more, always searching, a dream within a dream within a dream until we reached our final destination.”

“Limbo.”

Mal laughs softly, wryly. “But of course. It was... untouched. Pure. We built and we lived and we built; streets and buildings of both memory and fantasy, entwined. As one. We built until we lost ourselves. It was simple chance that I remembered – _Dom’s top, never falling, always spinning_ \- that we dreamt. I planted an idea in his mind, that our world did not exist. That we needed to die to wake up. But when we did... he was not the same.” Blinking rapidly she attempts to compose herself, her eyes wet.

Mal is too proud a woman to shed those tears.

“He framed me,” she continues, for once the dam has burst it is almost impossible to stop the flow, “implicated me in- in the murder of our children. He was a most persuasive man, my Dom.”

“What do you have to go back to?” Ariadne asks.

“Nothing,” Mal says, squaring her shoulders. “Nothing but their graves.”

  


_You know where you hope this train will take you, but you don’t know for sure._

  
_”James and Phillipa miss you.” Dom placates, voice a soothing balm, though his eyes are the window to the crazed soul within. His hand is steady, the gun unfaltering and as the safety clicks off Mal shudders, brimming with fear and anger and the bitter memory, that awful memory, of her darling children so-_

 _She breathes. In. Out._

 _A gun fires. Blood blossoms from a lurid chest wound, stains once innocent hands._

 _Mal wipes her fingerprints from the gun with practised ease, switching the two; it won’t be difficult to dispose of the other._

 _“Your wish is granted, my love.”_

-

“If you have nothing to live for, then why leave?” Dom is dying all over again, in her arms and in her mind and Mal wants to scream - _scream until her throat is broken, bleeding, tear out her own vocal chords and choke and drown, smothered in the vile refuse of her own making_ \- but this, this is catharsis, this is punishment and it is less than what she deserves.

She killed her husband. She murdered him in cold blood and now she must pay the price. “I have her. I have Ariadne.”

Laughter, and Dom is crazed, crimson bubbling up past his lips and running down his chin as Mal twists the knife deeper, sunk deep into his gut. “She’s just a _child_ Mal. I love-” His chest stutters, struggling to suck in air.

He dies.

Over the maelstrom Ariadne yells, terrified. Wind whips her hair around her face as they reside in the eye of the storm. Limbo is crumbling.

Mal shakes her head. “Take Fischer and go, Ariadne!”

But her rabbit, her precious rabbit... she refuses. Pushing Fischer over the precipice and into the arms of a kick she falls to her knees and they, over Dom’s rancid corpse, embrace. They embrace and they kiss and Ariadne’s lips are soft and insistent; grounding Mal firmly. Reality. How could she dream such perfection?

“Stay with me,” she says, and Ariadne falls into her, lost.

The world crashes down around them.

-

Time; it’s fluid. Like the never-ending landscape of their world it twists and turns and folds in on itself at every possible opportunity, a baffling undercurrent shaped by two sleeping minds. It is steel structures with polished glass and ancient cathedrals, it is tarmac and cobbled streets and the embrace of sand and stone at the water’s edge; the tumultuous sea. It is a house and a home and two women that slumber in a bed, curled up in each other’s arms, deaf and dumb and blind to all else.

The sun rises.

Ariadne awakens. She takes a shower; so hot it’s scalding, her skin bright pink. She dresses in jeans and a t-shirt, makes breakfast. When Mal makes her way into the kitchen they eat and from there, they build, wandering limbo with the sole purpose of infinite creation. Sometimes there is a man, Saito, but though he is a neighbour there is nothing in this world that connects them; nothing that they can recall.

They build.

The sun sets.

  


_But it doesn’t matter. Because you’ll be together._


End file.
